Читать книгу Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: An Unofficial, Practical Guide to Selling & Developing B2B Business On LinkedIn - Neal Schaffer - Страница 8

Early in my social media consulting career, I received a request for a proposal from a niche B2B software company. The director of marketing stated that her company had already started utilizing social media, and when I asked what they had done, she mentioned that they had created a Facebook Fan Page. Sigh.

Successful social media marketing is about knowing where your customers are and establishing a presence there. It is clear that professionals from all demographics are spending a great deal of time with social media, and that Facebook is the main networking site where we spend—or waste—our time. However, simply because many people are on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s the best use of time and effort for businesses. If you asked most people what they use certain social networking channels for, they would likely say that Facebook is for private use and LinkedIn is for business. That is, most people—including the decision makers with whom you want to connect—use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is viewed by professionals as a trusted place to network. Not only is the perceived purpose of each site different, but so is the demographic; many more-experienced professionals are not represented on Facebook, and those that are don’t engage on fan pages as much. LinkedIn may have fewer users, but the professional mindset and ability to network with other people who are on the site for the same reason makes LinkedIn a much more valuable tool for B2B companies than Facebook.

Admittedly, there are many similarities between Facebook and LinkedIn. For example, both Facebook and LinkedIn offer platforms so that people can become a part of a business’ community. On Facebook these are called fan pages, and on LinkedIn these are called companies pages. Facebook Fan Pages allow people to interact via wall postings while LinkedIn Companies Pages allow professionals to recommend company products and services as well as add comments to their recommendations. LinkedIn followers can see who in their network made what company recommendations just as Facebook users can see which of their friends like certain pages. LinkedIn has a widget that allows anyone to recommend your products and services on LinkedIn from any website, which is similar to Facebook Social Plugins.

However, a closer comparison of the two platforms demonstrates how LinkedIn provides better B2B business opportunities than Facebook:

LINKEDIN ALLOWS FOR MORE TARGETED PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY BUILDING. Just as you can create an ad on Facebook prompting consumers to “like” your page, similar ads on LinkedIn beckon professionals to “recommend” products and services. Above and beyond recommending a business, though, LinkedIn’s feature to follow a company allows you to “like” it simply by following it. As a result, these follower numbers have grown over time and companies such as Hewlett-Packard have (at the time of writing this book) amassed more than 285,000 followers.9 Compare this to the 315,000 fans HP’s Facebook Page10 has. Though the LinkedIn Companies Page for HP has slightly fewer followers than its Facebook Fan Page, those following the LinkedIn page are much more relevant to the business aspect of the company simply due to the professional demographic of LinkedIn.

LINKEDIN ALLOWS FOR MORE ROBUST INTERACTION BETWEEN COMPANIES AND FOLLOWERS. On Facebook, businesses are fairly restricted to fan pages, but LinkedIn offers the ability to build a public community of professionals with LinkedIn Groups in addition to the company page functionality. (Groups will be explained in more detail in Chapter 6.) Having a LinkedIn Group offers distinct advantages over a Facebook Fan Page; content from the outside world, including your website, can be shared directly in LinkedIn Groups with the LinkedIn share button, which can now be easily embedded into websites just as Twitter’s retweet and Facebook’s share buttons are. LinkedIn’s button is the more comprehensive feature, however, because it allows you to simultaneously share website content on your profile as well as directly to LinkedIn Groups.

LINKEDIN OFFERS BETTER PAGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS. Many Facebook Fan Page administrators have problems managing their pages efficiently because settings don’t allow for specific content control. However, LinkedIn has several moderation tools built into the groups that allow for granular detail regarding who can post what. For instance, the process for LinkedIn Group administrators to search through members, see when they joined the group, add them as managers, delete them, or delete and block them is simple. Facebook does not offer this extensive collection of features. In this respect, LinkedIn Groups are at the cutting edge of community management on any major social media site.

PUBLIC ACCESS ALLOWS FOR GREATER ENGAGEMENT WITH INTERESTED PEOPLE AND INCREASED VISIBILITY. Up until recently, Facebook Fan Pages had been the open arena in which people could engage. Previously, the problem with LinkedIn Groups was that they were private worlds; unless you were a member of that group, you couldn’t see inside it. The openness of Facebook Pages and the associated potential SEO benefits attracted companies to create pages and send more advertising revenue to Facebook. However, LinkedIn recently began to allow existing groups to become public and new public-only groups to be created.

It’s worth noting that the largest LinkedIn Group at the time this book was written, Job Openings, Job Leads and Job Connections!,11 had more than 450,000 members, while Facebook’s own page12 had more than 46 million fans. However, the number of LinkedIn Groups (more than 960,00013) was not that far behind that of the 1.3 million+ Facebook Pages.14 As more of the legacy LinkedIn Groups go public, they will flood the search engines with enough content to rival that of Facebook in due time. An increasing number of group discussions will come up in long tail search results, which will drive more traffic to LinkedIn and result in higher membership numbers in groups. Now that Facebook Fan Pages and public LinkedIn Groups offer virtually the same benefits regarding SEO and visibility, there is little reason for companies not to be active on LinkedIn.

GROUP MEMBERS ARE ALLOWED MORE ROOM FOR IN-DEPTH CONVERSATION. The engagement on LinkedIn Groups is significant because there is a lot of room for discussion; users are not confined to small status update boxes such as those used on Facebook. Furthermore, LinkedIn Groups offer daily and weekly digests so that followers can stay on top of discussions through email, a feature lacking with Facebook Pages.

The fact that you invested in this book means you already understand the sales and marketing potential of the LinkedIn platform and demographic. In 2011, we are already seeing signs that many marketers, especially those in B2B industries, are starting to realize this. A recent report indicated that B2B marketers use LinkedIn more than Facebook for marketing as well as for socializing.15 There is no question that for an increasing number of companies, LinkedIn is the preferred social media channel for business. LinkedIn’s recent initial public offering will only increase the number of businesses and professionals flocking to and utilizing its platform.